Source and Receptors of Emotion
When it comes to tones/emotion, keep two aspects in mind:
1) source (agent, cause) of feeling or emotion (-ing)
2) receiver of feeling or emotion (-ed)
Example: 1) The soothing music was calming the crowd. 2) The crowd was calmed by the soothing music.
The following reference demonstrates this concept well:
http://www.grammar-quizzes.com/passive3a.html
It is important to established both aspects in a shot to better establish your characters and the relationships within the scene.
Adding to the Tone of a Shot
Drew gave an awesome suggestion last night:
Add a twist to your shot by tacking on an adjective to an emotion or tone.
For example: rather than creating an idea with a tone of joy, put an adjective on that tone such as confused joy or uncontrollable joy. By putting on those adjectives, you just made your shot more engaging to the audience — it has a distinct direction. This is harder to sell, but when it does, it is much more powerful than the original adjective alone.
Resource:
Macho Macho Yomm
Most recent version of my Yomm shot. First time I’ve used this rig
Previous version:
Still polishing…
Beauty of One Second
Ben Fischler shared this link.
The Beauty Of a Second – 3rd round compilation (Instant Bliss) from The Beauty Of A Second on Vimeo.
This is wonderful as a stand-alone.
We can learn from this as animators. The power of one second — think about how much information can be told with proper staging. Capturing the bliss and selling the beauty in any moment. A second long shot with the same impact is one heck of a demo piece.
Cartoony Blocking Techniques
Recently I’ve been playing with the Malcolm rig (provided by AnimSchool for free). A friend of mine pointed me to some great tutorials by Kevin (KJax on YouTube) which use and push a female version of the Malcolm rig of how to block a cartoony style animation. I dig the style of his shots and the efficiency of his method!
Earthquake!
Here’s the most recent version of my earthquake shot:
I need to polish it off more — I want to get a feeling of cushion into each pose. Definitely a fun shot 
Glen Keane Resources
Glen Keane is an incredible artist/animator (that’s such an understatement). Drew shared these links with us and I wanted to pass them along as well! SO inspiring.
Drawing:
Animation Demo:
Tying down a drawing:
Beast Shot:
Ratigan Shot:
Fagin Shot:
Transformation of the Beast:
Aladdin Scene:
Young Jim Hawkins Scene From Treasure Planet (one of my favorites!):
Busy Walk – Blocking Plus
Block plus, first version for this week:
V2:
Busy Walk WIPs
Let’s get this started. First pass of blocking. I was pleasantly surprised at how much faster I’ve gotten! Still plugging away…
V1:
V2:
took out the textures. Changed the composition. Changed the posing in the walk — he’s leaning back now. Trying to play with stretching –looking a bit weird right now — but Ill figure it out 
V3:
Played with timing, staggering the arcs (when the arm swings, then the leg, etc), pushing poses (for cartoony feel)…building contrast. Progress
Texting distraction (new shot planning)
I wanted to do a body mechanics shot that is short with one action that still has commentary.
That way I can nail the action, and play around with pushing the timing and poses.
So…this reflects our common distraction with technology. texting, texting, texting…
Video reference:
sketches:
